When I was in real estate I got the kind of call folks dream about. It was a professional couple who had just moved to Great Falls and wanted to buy a house. They both had good incomes and knew exactly what they wanted in a home. They had a lengthy checklist of requirements.

Over the next weeks I showed them house after house that met most of their desires. Then one day, I found it. The house had just come on the market and it was perfect in every way plus it had additional qualities that made it more desirable. I walked through the house and called them immediately. I said, “I’m standing in your new home.”

To my utter confusion they looked at it and said “No”. I was baffled. There simply could not be more perfect house anywhere around Great Falls.

I didn’t stop looking for them but, I confess, I put less energy into the quest. About two weeks later I got a call from them saying they’d found the perfect house and wanted me to put their bid in on it. I got the sale but it left me even more confused. The house they bought was absolutely not what they’d said they wanted. It wasn’t in the right area, it was smaller, it wasn’t at all what I’d looked at for them for weeks.

Human nature is vexing. In the Bible, in Romans, Paul complained he did not do what he wanted to do but, instead, did what he professed to hate. We’re confusing even to ourselves.

I say I want to lose weight but dinner was really good and I have a second helping. I say I want to do some chore but never seem to get around to it until I absolutely have to. Then the chore which had been weighing on me takes only a few minutes and I chastise myself for not getting it done sooner.

I sometimes think about a class I took. Each of us had to write out what we believed. When we came to class the next time we had to give what we wrote, not to the professor, but to another student who would read what we wrote and evaluate it for logic and consistency. Naturally, we all found flaws in each other’s work. That went on for an entire semester. It was frustrating, really frustrating but, by the end of the semester I knew what I believed and why. I had a stronger set of beliefs and, most importantly, a deeper understanding of myself.

I forget about those insights but, occasionally, I’m reminded we are all human, we all talk and act as if somethings are important to us but then we do something else. Of course, we don’t condemn ourselves nearly as harshly as we condemn others. After all, we have several good excuses for our failures. We forget the Bible also says, “Judge not”, and that can apply to ourselves as well.